


He Is Shane

by CynicalGamer



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, Insomnia, sad stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 15:59:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6290818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynicalGamer/pseuds/CynicalGamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don't actually know what this is</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Is Shane

He was six.

He broke the lamp in the hall and cried as his mother scolded him, but he knew next week was a fresh start. She would forgive.

 

He was twelve.

Above him, a teacher shouted, but he did not dare look. Instead, he stared at the shoes he wore, all tattered up with a hole near the pinky toe. Shane compared himself to his shoes, all beaten up and unsure how long he could last, but functional. He was still functional. He was not done yet. There was a fresh start around the corner. Life was full of them.

 

He was fourteen.

Having just started high school, he looked forward to a fresh start after years of personal neglect and the inability to motivate himself. Greasy hair clung to his forehead and his eyes already narrowed in a half-asleep appearance. He looked forward to a fresh start that never really existed.

Shane had a habit of biting at his nails, some of the edges accidentally left sharp, and he would manage to scratch himself in his restless sleep. The neighbors in the apartment to the left often had screaming matches during the late hours of the night. Sometimes you just had to adjust to these things, but screaming always made him cower under the covers and chew even more at what barely remained of his nails. The small bits laid scattered on the mattress, left to cling to his skin in the summertime when the air conditioning didn’t work and he couldn’t stand to wear more than one layer of clothing.

On the first day of highschool, while chewing away nervously at his nails, back of the class where he couldn’t see the board, but was too intimidated to move any closer, a girl called him out on his habit. Shane never chewed at his nails again. Instead, he’d clip them every night before bed.

He didn’t sleep right for months and months.

 

He was sixteen.

Sleeping habits had left him constantly dazed and in a bitter mood. He still couldn’t properly take care of himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, just that there was a cognitive disassociation; he couldn’t perform the actions he so desperately needed to. Coffee became a must in the mornings, but the jitters throughout the day only hindered his productivity. Anxiety and mood swings were at an all time high. Shane’s mother sent him to therapy, despite his reluctance.

There, he learned of a long list of ‘issues’ he had. Prescriptions were filled. Time blurred. Hands shook as he held onto a pill that was supposed to help with sleep. But he hesitated in taking it after overhearing his mother in the night complain about the extra expenses. He had become a burden, after two of years of trying so desperately to dig himself out of the hole that was made for him, by him, years and years before. Where had that fresh start gone?

Shane swallowed the pill and immediately cried.

 

He was eighteen.

With every last bit of effort he could muster, Shane passed high school. Barely. When his name was called to receive his diploma, he wanted to cry. Not because he was happy, but because he felt he had cheated everyone. He hadn’t earned it. But college was a fresh start, a real chance to discover and better himself in ways he couldn’t before.

With financial aid and the income he had saved up, he could afford community college, but there was never a hope for him to get into any university. Not with his record. Not with his background. Not with who he was. So, settling for any education really, hadn’t seemed like such a bad idea. But the work load weighed down on him. The weight of not only the world’s expectations of him, but of his own insecurities and crippling doubts, caused him to cave in rather early. Shane dropped out.

 

He was twenty.

After another couple years of working near minimum wage, he finally had saved up enough money that he could move out. In the back of his head, he knew he wasn't ready, but there wasn’t much of a choice left. He wasn’t the kind to want to prolong the inevitable, more of the ‘rip off the band aid’ kind of guy. Regardless, he had to at least try and make it on his own, but the first night was lonely. Shane curled up under the covers, a bottle of his remaining sleeping pills in his hand, but he doesn’t take them, only stares.

It had been two months since he last used them. It had been eight months since he last took any of his other medication. He didn’t want to need them, he had wished to be balanced, he had wished so many times to undo his own head.

The pills had helped before and he didn’t like that. There was no thing as a fresh start.

 

He was twenty-one.

Shane forced himself to go to his old therapist, to rid of some of his pent up stress and anxieties. Being on his own was so difficult. There was no one to remind him what time it was, no sense of real normalcy other than a job he resented.

His therapist suggested an extreme change. Get out of the city. Shane laughed it off at first; it was outrageous to think that was even an option. But then the idea hung around, deep in the back of his mind. Was it possible? He had an aunt, one who owned a Ranch in some tiny, barely relevant town 

Using a payphone outside a small gas station where he had just purchased a six pack, Shane called his Aunt Marnie. He wanted to cry at how soft and kind she was, how understanding she was. He hadn’t even fully explained why he wanted to move in with her. This was finally that fresh start he had always wanted.

 

He was twenty-two.

Everything was a lie, deep down. All of it. There was never such a thing as a fresh start. Never. Shane ended up right where he had started, even in an irrelevant town, there was still no way to escape the harshness of reality. Life was a cycle of hope and the inevitable crushing of it.

 

He was twenty-three.

Shane grew to tolerate his existence. Drowned his struggles in beer and swallowed the pain down with the help of microwaved pizzas he snuck out of work. It wasn’t much, but it was life as he knew it. He was never rude to his little cousin Jas or to his Aunt Marnie, who was kind enough to rent the room to him for so cheap. He existed.

 

He was twenty-five.

The day he met you, a newcomer to town, all ignorant and hopeful that this was your fresh start. That you could just up and move and be happier. He hated you. He hated you to his bitter core every day that you approached him with a smile.

There was no way you could be happy.

 

He was wrong.

He stopped hating you, slowly. He envied you. He saw you as everything he wish he could have been when he came here. You were a fresh start, the very embodiment of it.


End file.
